B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

Chapter 3
Integration Patterns
The focus of this chapter
To achieve B2B integration, a company will have to adopt one or more
of the following integration patterns: data oriented integration, portal
oriented integration, application oriented integration and business process
oriented integration. Irrespective of the integration pattern or a
combination of multiple patterns that a company uses for B2Bi, the
final goal is to achieve real-time, secured access to internal corporate
and external (suppliers, partners and customers) data, which allows
dynamic collaboration. The integration strategy should be in line with a
company's business and technology environments and short-term and
long-term business goals.
In this chapter, you will learn about the different patterns of B2B
integration: data oriented integration, portal oriented integration,
application oriented integration and business process oriented integration.
We will also discuss how a company can choose its integration strategy
based on the type of agreement with the trading partners, existing
infrastructure and level of synchronization desired.
47